1930s NOIR TYPE STORY IT LOOKS LIKE

Milwaukee 1932, the Great Depression going full blast, repeal of Prohibition just around the corner, Al Capone in the federal pen, the private investigation business shifting from labor-management relations to the more domestic kind. Hicks McTaggart, a one-time strikebreaker turned private eye, thinks he’s found job security until he gets sent out on what should be a routine case, locating and bringing back the heiress of a Wisconsin cheese fortune who’s taken a mind to go wandering. Before he knows it, he’s been shanghaied onto a transoceanic liner, ending up eventually in Hungary where there’s no shoreline, a language from some other planet, and enough pastry to see any cop well into retirement – and of course no sign of the runaway heiress he’s supposed to be chasing. By the time Hicks catches up with her he will find himself also entangled with Nazis, Soviet agents, British counterspies, swing musicians, practitioners of the paranormal, outlaw motorcyclists, and the troubles that come with each of them, none of which Hicks is qualified, forget about being paid, to deal with. Surrounded by history he has no grasp on and can’t see his way around in or out of, the only bright side for Hicks is it’s the dawn of the Big Band Era and as it happens he’s a pretty good dancer. Whether this will be enough to allow him somehow to lindy-hop his way back again to Milwaukee and the normal world, which may no longer exist, is another question.

Seco

https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Ticket-Thomas-Pynchon/dp/1594206104/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0

And it was incredible.

Honestly a top 3 sandwich for me. It alone could catapult TP to greatest writer of all time.

👻

I’m a first-timer for Pynchon and I’m wrapping up part 3 of Gravity’s Rainbow. I’m loving this experience. Pynchon is my 78 y/o uncle’s favorite author and he believes GR is not just Pynchon’s Magnum Opus, but the definitive Great American Novel.

For some added context on my uncle— he was a public high school teacher in east la for several decades and also was a public servant for LA County such as working on the Water Control Board and similar agencies. He’s a Leftist who has now moved down to Colombia to study the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez lol.

He has been encouraging me to read GR for a long time and I often call him after I’ve read a handful of chapters so we can discuss. During a very long chapter in the middle of part 3 I texted him about how Pokler, Blicero, and some other’s ’rocket mysticism’ reminds me of our technocrats almost religious connection to both AI and transhumansim.

I really enjoyed his response so figured I’d share that here!

Via savejazz on X (Twitter)

I’m just sayin, if anyone’s taking ME off the lam, it’s that Dua Lipa.

What a whirl wind this book has been. Took well over a year to read and has been the most challenging novel of my life. Recently learned that Pynchon wrote most of the book at a little bungalow in Manhattan Beach that I had walked by a million times. So in honor of finally finishing the book I read the final few pages out front. It was just at sunset and the sun and moon were exactly opposite on the horizon, echoing the last two sections titled Ascent and Descent. Pretty heady stuff guys let me tell ya.